Roosevelt knew better. My client didn't. Do you?

Since starting our travels, I've taken a real interest in Theodore Roosevelt. I spend at least part of each travel day listening to his biography. If you don't know… ol' Teddy was instrumental in developing our National Park System. His connection to nature shaped his agenda and the outcomes he wanted to create as President (and even before).

We'll talk more about past-derived futures versus past-driven futures another time. It was one of the most beneficial things I learned from my executive coach when I started working with him many years ago.

But first — let's get into it.

One real founder pattern. Diagnosed, dissected, fixed.

In 1895, Roosevelt took over one of the most corrupt police departments in America as President of the NYC Board of Police Commissioners.

The NYPD was broken. Officers were on the take. Laws were selectively enforced based on whoever was paying. The institution was rotting from the inside.

Roosevelt could have done a dozen things. Built new programs. Launched new initiatives. Positioned himself for the governorship everyone knew was coming. Ideas of being President were already floating around in the public and in his own head.

Instead, he chose to focus on just one thing.

Fix the foundation.

He walked the streets himself at midnight to make sure his officers were actually at their posts. He measured everything against a single outcome: a department that enforced the law without exception and promoted on merit, not money.

When two journalists asked him during that same period whether he planned to run for President someday, he exploded.

"Don't you dare ask me that. Don't you put such ideas in my head. I will begin to work for it — I'll be careful, calculating, cautious — and so I'll beat myself."

He knew exactly what chasing the next thing before completing the first would cost him.

The foundation would collapse. The outcome he needed to commit to right now would slip. The spaghetti noodles would start flying — and he wouldn't achieve what he truly wanted or what the city truly needed in that moment.

Most founders do the opposite. Sometimes out of fear. Sometimes out of their own beliefs or limitations. Sometimes because they chase short-term cash or possibility over the long-term investment of building what actually needs to be built right now.

When the foundation works

A client recently gave me permission to share this because she said she knew other founders needed to hear it.

She came to me several months ago ready to step fully into her role as CEO.

Her team wasn't performing without her in the middle of it all. Slack was blowing up daily. Client chaos everywhere. She couldn't focus where it mattered most.

We committed to one clear outcome for Q2: define what good performance looks like in key roles and create the systems and documentation for a seamless client journey - specifically focusing on the first two phases.

We kicked off strong. Then the revenue numbers dipped slightly. And a new idea showed up.

She fired out a Slack with a new priority — new focus, new revenue stream, move quickly. The team threw up their hands. They were already underwater — mid-project on the foundational work she'd committed to — and this felt like whiplash. Because it was.

In our next 1:1, I asked her to pause. Trust the work already in motion. She agreed and we communicated it to the team.

The real truth was she didn't have a revenue problem. She had a visibility problem. No one was tracking the data for all she was doing in marketing. She didn't know which faucet to turn on… and she didn't have the mental freedom to focus on what she actually needed to create the future she said she was committed to.

When she recommitted to the original outcome and we built a metrics tracker to objectively measure her marketing performance, the revenue started showing up. As I'm writing this, a Slack notification just came through — she signed another big client on a 12-month contract.

The foundation always works. When you hold the line long enough and focus on what's actually important.

Priority instability has a real cost. And it’s not usually about the cash.

It's about the time.

Every time a founder shifts priorities mid-quarter, the team (and your business) loses momentum. That loss in momentum costs weeks. Sometimes a month. Sometimes even a full quarter. And the time has a cost, even if you don’t actually calculate it.

Here's what makes that so expensive: progress compounds. Every week your team executes on the same clear priority, they get faster, smarter, and more capable. The work builds on itself. But every time you redirect them, you reset the clock. You don't just lose the week. You lose everything that week would have built on top of.

"Understanding both the power of compound interest and the difficulty of getting it is the heart and soul of a lot of things." — Charlie Munger

The hardest part about priority instability isn't recognizing it in someone else's business. It's recognizing it in your own. When you're deep inside of it with all the emotional attachment and the roller coaster of feelings and stress levels — it's almost impossible to see that the chaos you're managing is chaos that you actually created. You can't see the forest for the trees you're standing in.

That's why outside perspective isn't optional. It's the shortcut.

When I took PPS from zero to seven figures in under a year, I brought in someone who had taken a company from low seven figures to over a billion dollars in just under ten years. I'd built a seven-figure business before… but that path took more than two years because neither the founder nor I had the experience yet. I didn't want to waste that time again. I was pregnant with my second kid. The clock was real.

Most of my clients hesitate around this at some point. Cash becomes the focus. They start to shift. It shows up as a delay. A few weeks. A month. Then they come back, refocus, recommit — and finally they get to where they wanted to go.

But they always wish they hadn't lost the time.

You can always make more money. You cannot make more time. Every quarter spent chasing the wrong priority is a quarter you don't get back — and a quarter your business didn't compound the way it should have.

That's the real cost.

One of my clients came to me a few months ago ready to step fully into her role as CEO.

Her team wasn't performing without her. Slack was blowing up daily. Client chaos everywhere. She couldn't focus where it mattered most.

We committed to one clear outcome for Q2: define what “good” performance looks like in a few key roles and create the systems and documentation for a seamless client journey - focusing in on the first two phases.

We kicked off strong. Then, the revenue numbers dipped slightly. And a new idea showed up.

She fired out a Slack with a new priority… new focus, new revenue stream, move quickly. The team threw up their hands because they were already underwater — mid-project on the foundational work she'd committed to — and this felt like whiplash. Because it was.

In our next 1:1, I asked her to pause. Trust the work already in motion. She agreed (somewhat hesitantly).

The real truth… she had a problem but it wasn’t about the revenue or dip in sales. She had a visibility problem. No one was tracking the data for all that she was doing in marketing. She didn't know which faucet to turn on - and she didn't have the mental freedom to focus on what she actually needed to create the future she said she was committed to.

When she recommitted to the original outcome for the quarter and once we’d created the metrics tracker to objectively measure performance for her marketing person, the revenue started showing up. As I'm writing this, a Slack notification actually just came through - she’s just signed another big, new client for a 12 month contract.

The foundation always works. When you hold the line long enough and focus on what’s actually important.

Before you build anything new this quarter — answer these three questions. Write it down. Take it old school - pen and paper.

If the answer has shifted or changed, I would be willing to bet the culprit is because you’ve committed to the wrong outcomes. Go back and take a look and define what you’re actually wanting to produce and how you will track the prioritized actions and then measure the results.

If any of those three questions brought something up for you - or if you simply have questions about it - then show up live next Tuesday.

Priority instability is one of the most common patterns I see in founders between $100K and $500K. It doesn't show up as chaos. It shows up as a team that's always slightly behind, a business that never quite compounds, and a founder who can't figure out why the results are matching the inputs and effort.

That's exactly what we're diagnosing and fixing on June 23rd as we go through the 6-Step Bottleneck Breakthrough Process and define out what you’re actually committed to for the next 90-days.

All six steps. Live. Free. Plus some hot seat coaching — bring your real situation and we'll work it in real time.

Register for the next free live training

What running lean and growing a business without being in the middle of it all looks like.

We're parked in Munising, Michigan this week — right on the southern shore of Lake Superior. By the time this lands in your inbox, we'll have moved on to Mackinac Island.

We spent five hours kayaking the Pictured Rocks this week. If you've never seen it — picture ocean-scale cliffs, water so clear you can see the shipwrecks along the bottom, colors that don't look real. If feels like an ocean, only it's a freshwater lake in the middle of the country. We also hiked a trail that felt like a rainforest — dense, green, completely otherworldly — and only to have it suddenly open up onto a beach. Fresh water. No salt. Not an actual ocean. Just Lake Superior doing whatever it wants. My mind is going to stay blown for a long time to come.

(Also, mosquitoes so large they could carry my kids off and away. I thought I knew bugs being from NC. I didn’t.)

I keep thinking about that hike as I write this issue.

You're in the trees. You can't see what's ahead. You just keep moving through what's in front of you…. and then the view opens up completely.

That's what holding the line on your commitment to the true outcome actually feels like. Thick, hard to see through what you’re moving through. Until one day it just opens up. And it’s so worth it at the end.

One shift at a time,

Christy

P.S.  You just answered three questions about your Q3 priorities. Don't let them sit in your notebook. Reply and tell me what you found. If something's fuzzy, I'll tell you. If it's solid, I'll tell you that too. Consider it a free gut check.

The spaghetti noodles stop here.